Maya Man
Maya Man is an artist focused on pop culture’s soft power and contemporary identity on the internet. Her work examines dominant narratives around femininity, authenticity, and the performance of self. She has exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; bitforms, NYC; the Museum of Fashion, Antwerp; SOOT, Tokyo; Verse, London; HEK, Basel; and the online platform Feral File. She has performed or presented her work at The New Museum, NYC; The V&A and Tate Britain, London; and MOCA, Los Angeles.
Her work has been featured in Art in America, Document, New York Review of Architecture, Los Angeles Review of Books, and CURA among other publications. She organizes a curatorial project called HEART, previously run out of her studio in SoHo. She is online at mayaontheinter.net.
Dreams Come True focuses on worldbuilding the narrative of a fictional six-piece girl group that’s been introduced to the global pop music ecosystem in a collaborative effort between a Korean and American management company. Conceptually, the work references KATSEYE, a real-life girl group formed by two powerful entities: the Korean entertainment company HYBE and American music label Geffen. In 2024, Netflix released a docuseries following the formation of Katseye, where hundreds of hopefuls from around the world compete for five spots in HYBE x Geffen’s first global girl group.
This fictional girl group follows a similar pattern. The group has been formed through a “reality television competition series” where the K-pop methodology of training and promoting idols is applied to a pop star production system that brings in aspiring performers from around the world. Each of the idols (K-pop term for pop stars) in this girl group, like the five idols in KATSEYE, represent a different race/ethnicity, reflecting the entertainment industry’s effort toward global appeal.
Dreams Come True critically examines the engine of pop music and how political ideology and national power can spread through online content. It parallels pop music fandoms with religious groups, emphasizing the intensity of emotional affect and potential consequences of celebrity culture in the age of generative AI.
The title, Dreams Come True, is the name of a popular song by S.E.S., widely regarded as the first K-pop girl group in Korea, formed in 1997.